We just hit another milestone today with over 34,000,000 views. We are also recently passed 40,000 followers on Twitter. We remain the “little engine that could” among blogs with a growing collection of people who are seeking a place for civil but passionate discourse on legal and policy issues of our time (and perhaps a few wacky stories). We often use these milestones to look at the current profile of the blog and its supporters around the world.

As always, I want to offer special thanks for our weekend contributors and particularly Darren Smith who continues help up with periodic technical problems etc).

I particularly want to thank our regular commentators and readers. We try to keep this blog as an open forum with as little interference or monitoring of the comments as possible. Given our free speech orientation, we try not to delete comments and, for that reason, we are deeply appreciative of how most people avoid personal or offensive comments in debating these issues. Obviously, our open forum allows trolls and others to spew comments that are at times offensive and obnoxious but we continue to believe that civil and balanced comments will prevail. Thank you for voluntarily assuming restraint over the tenor and content of your comments.

So here is our current profile:

In the last 90 days, our ten biggest international sources for readers (after the United States) have been:

Canada

United Kingdom

Australia

Germany

India

New Zealand

France

Mexico

Netherlands

Welcome to all of our new readers from those countries, particularly the sharp increase this year from regulars from Germany. I have always found our foreign commentators particularly valuable in giving us an insight from beyond our borders — and domestic media coverage.

The top ten posted in terms of readership in the last 90 days:

1. Ex-Nobel Secretary Admits Obama’s Prize Was A Mistake

2. NASA Continues To Rack Up “Firsts,” Including “Heat Shield Rock” Found On Mars

10. South Africa’s New Economic Plan: Expropriation of Land and Printing Money

The most frequent commentators were:

Allan

Squeeky Fromm

Late4Dinner

Linda

Paul C. Schulte

Autumn

Mespo

Thank you to all of our regular commentators. We remain an extraordinarily broad and diverse body of commenters from different parts of the world and different political and social backgrounds. Thanks again.

Thanks again to those who try to keep our discussions passionate but civil. We obviously have relapses into personal attacks, particularly during these heated political times. However, I am impressed how most people are able to transcend disagreements to avoid making our differences personal or offensive. There remains a core of people in this country that want to speak objectively about the problems in our country — both legal and political. Some have found their way to this blog and I hope more will join them. We hope that this forum can remain a pluralistic and open forum for mature people to engage in mature discussions. Such discussions have never been more important.

Thanks again everyone and congratulations on the latest milestone. Now on to 35,000,000!

“… with a growing collection of people who are seeking a place for civil but passionate discourse …”

and then going elsewhere after being disappointed to discover an inordinate degree of petty douchebaggery amongst people infatuated with irrelevancies — many of whom have an elitist attitude that comes from god knows where. Maybe it’s from a similar source as Elizabeth Warren’s native American lineage — something their parents told them about how special they are.

Don’t throw your shoulder out patting yourself on the back, JT. And you might also consider doing something about your weltschmerzian judgmentalism — the habit of judging the world by comparison with what you believe an ideal world to be, without regard for people having to make decisions in an imperfect world.

How is a person expected to play by the rules in a system where nobody else plays by the rules? Consideration of that dilemma seems absent from virtually all of your legal analyses.

As a matter of practical reality, it’s far easier to cite the rules than to play by the rules when the other team isn’t playing by the rules.

Paul C. Schulte,..
In the unofficial category for this thread’s most the most overused
words and phrases, “oligarchs”, “Koch”, “oligarchy”, “the .1%”, and “Kochs” must be at the top of the list.
I think you may have started up some competion a few days ago when you first wrote “read Weart”.😉😀
I see that its use is expanding already and, with effort, “Weart” and “read Weart” may top the currrent list of words/phrase most frequently used.

Exodus 1:15-21
“15Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other was named Puah; 16and he said, “When you are helping the Hebrew women to give birth and see them upon the birthstool, if it is a son, then you shall put him to death; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.” 17But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt had commanded them, but let the boys live. 18So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, and let the boys live?” 19The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife can get to them.” 20So God was good to the midwives, and the people multiplied, and became very mighty. 21Because the midwives feared God, He established households for them.”

“Weltschmerz (from the German, meaning world-pain or world-weariness, pronounced [ˈvɛltʃmɛɐ̯ts]) is a term coined by the German author Jean Paul and denotes the kind of feeling experienced by someone who believes that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind. This kind of world view was widespread among several romantic and decadent authors such as Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, William Blake, the Marquis de Sade, Charles Baudelaire, Giacomo Leopardi, Paul Verlaine, François-René de Chateaubriand, Alfred de Musset, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolaus Lenau, Hermann Hesse, and Heinrich Heine. It is also used to denote the feeling of anxiety caused by the supposed ills of the world.”

One must now wonder whether William Bayer uses the same design value for the modulus of rupture of Turley’s weltschmerzian judgmentalism as Bayer uses for his own weltschmerzian judgmentalism.

I’m a relative newcomer, a couple of years, but I’ve never seen any evidence that Turley actually visits this site to see what the responses are to his posts. When was the last time anyone remembers Turley himself responding to a comment here or participating in a discussion?

I do like some of the people here including some with whom I disagree with on almost every issue. That said, civility is not the rule and Turley’s claim is made in the ignorance of not actually seeing what goes on.

You can indeed be humorous Squeeky although many of your views are at best unfortunate. In small doses you are entertaining.

There are others here under the auspices of what Turley would call “free speech” who are vile and disgusting and make me consider spending less (or no) time here. There is little actual discussion, simply alternate attacking in some cases and those who are totally uninformed or misinformed seem to scream the loudest.

I no longer visit ANY main screed media news sites including CNN, NYT, Fox News, WaPo, Politico, Breitbart, NY Post, The Atlantic, Washington Times, and the others. At home we have become exhausted with the news media manipulating viewers with their revenue streams as their end point at our expense. America was not supposed to succumb this way

Since unplugging we visit Jonathan Turley and a few Catholic websites (Vatican News) for our edification. Thats it.
No Facebook, no Twitter, no social media connectivity whatsoever, rarely email.

The top ten countries listed don’t have repressive governments like Russia. While Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Information, Technology and Mass Media may block its regular citizens from access, is it possible paid commenters are routed through channels where country of origin is bogus?
If so, could the list be cited as fake news?

Squeek and Paul, Thanks much for your concern. I have been in San Diego w/ a steady stream of family and friend visiting. I’m outside walking most of my time in beautiful San Diego. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to you good people.